itch.io

Thanks for playing! Agreed on both counts. We talked about adding difficulty options early on, but never quite got around to it before the deadline (as it goes with jams). As for the spells, they are long enough and difficult enough that they should probably take multiple typos to fail instead of just one.

Thanks for playing! We definitely made a few people realize how much they hit backspace with this game!

Oops, user error then! I somehow missed the second tutorial screen that tells you what the plants do, even though it was definitely working in the Linux build (just checked). I must have just double-clicked "Okay" and skipped the second screen.

Fun game and a nice take on the theme! It was pretty challenging, but I managed to power up the sunflower eventually. It really wasn't intuitive to me what the plants did, even by the end. One slowed the enemies down, it seemed, and the other (the blue one) I never figured out. I kind of just dropped plants around randomly.

I tried to survive the sequence after the sunflower part, but health started decaying too quickly. Is that meant to be survivable?

This is such an impressive entry. It has a high level of polish, and the gameplay is incredibly fun and challenging (been playing for the last hour and still haven't been able to beat it). The tutorial at the beginning is really nice and well-made as well. The worms chasing after you look so aggressive and intimidating; they're awesome. It's kind of funny how chill the tutorial is, and then it just goes from 0 to 100 the second the gameplay starts. Overall, really fantastic job!

Loved the art style and general aesthetic of the game. The gameplay was simple and enjoyable, and on the whole, it all felt very polished.

It would have been nice if the spells were a little bit more necessary. I didn't really find much opportunity to use them as I could just jump/dash around just about everything, and as such, it also didn't matter to me if I lost them.

Trying to resize the window to fit my screen caused all sorts of havoc--black bar/dithering over the top half of the screen, frame drops, freezes--so I had to play in a small window.

But overall, this was a great experience. Nice work!

Fun little game and a creative take on the theme! The star light pattern on the last puzzle surprised me as it emerged, very cool. I really appreciated how quick it was to reset a level.

I had a couple issues while playing:

• It was very easy to push reflectors or boxes too far and have to reset the stage.
• Coming into contact with the pushable reflector would absolutely destroy the frame rate. I think it was actually running at 1 FPS, which made it very hard to stop touching the reflector.
• In level 26, I managed to desync the umbrella when going down the spike pit on the left. The umbrella ended up offset from the character in the level.
• The umbrella always tried to face towards the mouse, even when using a controller. This was very frustrating as I either had to hold the joystick in the direction I wanted the umbrella constantly (so I couldn't press other buttons) or pre-position the mouse before doing anything that required the umbrella (which would rotate toward the mouse as I moved around).
• Controller support didn't really work in the menus/UI.

Really cool game. Implementing a proper settings menu, music player, achievements, etc. in the span of 9 days is quite the feat! The gameplay was simple yet enjoyable, the graphics were nice, and I loved the music. I played through the game a couple times and tried to do some achievement hunting. Unfortunately, I ran into a lot of bugs, some of which were game-breaking, so I didn't manage to get all the achievements. The bugs I ran into, in no particular order:

• When playing in controller-mode, I could move with the controller but not attack. I still had to hit Space for that. This also applies to interacting with the trader. Controller buttons work fine in the trader menu, though.
• Things got buggy sometimes when changing settings, and I ended up with no input working on several occasions. Had to refresh the page and start fresh.
• You get stuck on walls instead of sliding smoothly against them, which makes it hard to kite enemies sometimes.
• Music player plays over the already-playing background music.
• In secret rooms with all the gold dogs, some gold piles will land outside the walls and be unreachable. Especially the  secret room in the last stage.
• At some point, I stopped being able to buy eggs from the trader. I would try to buy an egg, lose no money, and be sent to the See You Soon page before exiting the shop entirely.
• After beating the first boss on a second play-through, I got a gray screen where the game should be (i.e. I could still see the HUD frame and such) and couldn't continue. The only way out that I found was just refreshing the page and losing all progress, including achievements. I played through the full game again, started another second play-through, and the same thing happened. This is what really stopped my achievement hunt.

Bugs aside, I did have a lot of fun playing this one!

This was a lot of fun to play. The aesthetics and artwork were fantastic, and the SFX/music were satisfying and fit nicely. The level of polish for a 9-day jam game is really impressive. The only real issue I had was that it could be hard to tell which status effects were applied to the opponent and what they were even doing (I never did figure out what "vulnerability" did, exactly).

I managed to beat the boss on my second attempt (though it was close). I'd love to see an extended version with more cards, synergies, and strategy.

Nice work! I really enjoyed this take on the theme. I never played the old Quake/Source games, but I had fun rocket jumping around and trying to skip parts of the levels. Played through all the levels twice.

My only complaint is that the controls felt very slippery. It made it very easy to slide off a platform into lava, leading to a full level restart.

Were the cubes meant to heal you when you shot them or just when you touched them? Regardless, shooting them does heal you, and it feels a bit cheesy!

Played through on both normal and hard. The sound design was nice, but neither mode offered much in the way of gameplay. I just walked around, picked up items, then walked back. There didn't seem to be much point in engaging with the enemies at all, and they didn't seem terribly interested in engaging with me either (I followed a few around, tried to get them to aggro with varying levels of success, then just walked away). For large stretches, there weren't any enemies around at all. I think it really would've helped to tighten up the map (less empty space) and increase the threat of the enemies (more of them, more aggressive, more dangerous when they do aggro) to keep pressure on the player (and maybe give them a reason to use those bullets).

The constantly depleting health also didn't add much pressure. I found you could just ignore it if you were walking around looting since you'd always get enough health to stay topped off.

The music was nice, and I enjoyed the somewhat spooky/mysterious atmosphere while exploring the map. The reticle narrowing when focusing on enemies was a nice touch.

It's okay, thanks for trying!

Thanks for playing! I'm very happy to hear people are liking the typing-based menus. I thought it was a fun idea.

Thanks for playing! I thought being able to control everything by typing was a cool idea, so I'm very happy to hear you liked the typing-controlled menu. Yeah, the game definitely rewards accuracy over pure speed; I've heard from a few people that it made them realize just how much they hit Backspace while typing!

Thanks for playing, and glad you enjoyed it! Agreed on the progress bar; that would definitely be a good addition.

Thanks for playing! There are definitely some things that could be made more obvious (e.g. that you can just start typing a spell at any time, that you can actually still type spells while "stunned" from a mistake in the main text, etc.). Glad you enjoyed it once it clicked, though!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing! Having an actual typewriter on-hand definitely went a long way towards making nice sound effects.

Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!

This game was super cute and quite the unexpected take on the theme of decay. Love the art style and general vibe. I upgraded everything in the shop, and it took me a few tries but I managed to beat all the different dungeons. The final one was surprisingly challenging! Had a lot of fun with this game, great job!

Nice work! I really liked your take on the theme, and the puzzles were well-designed. 

The biggest issue I had was that the controls could use some work. The "W" key is overloaded to be climb/jump/walljump depending on context, and it often didn't do the expected thing. For example, jumping straight up from the floor would actually make you wall jump away from the wall if you were too close. This is made worse by the fact that jumps are a limited resource, so I had a lot of resets to that sort of thing. Ladders were also problematic. You can't really adjust upward on a ladder since "W" just makes you jump off it entirely (actually, just about any adjustment makes you just fall off the ladder). This made the whole experience more frustrating than it needed to be.

That said, I had fun playing, and would love to see a version with a little more polish on the controls.

Interesting concept with a rather charming art-style. Unfortunately I had to keep referring back to the description on the web page to figure out what the buttons did. It would have helped a lot to have some hover-text or something with the descriptions in-game. I would've loved some more variety in the castle too. After a few cycles, it all felt very same-y, and I started just running past the enemies. I did enjoy the music, especially when opening the game and transitioning to night.

You know, that's a very good point. I put it on shift because it seemed like a good option for fast movement (often used for sprinting), but it's kind of out of the way, huh?  I didn't really notice because I have a split keyboard with shift on the thumb cluster. Oops.

Oh no, I forgot about sticky keys...

Yeah, we're missing a web export just because we made the page and exported very last minute. I just didn't remember how to do a web build for itch off-hand and didn't have time to figure it out.

Thanks for playing!

Happy to hear you had fun and enjoyed our take on the theme! Yeah, holding shift to dash longer is a pretty important part of gameplay that I completely failed to actually mention in-game. I'm glad you figured it out anyway! The walk speed definitely could've been bumped up to not feel so sluggish. I meant to do so, but ran out of time before getting around to it. 

Thanks for playing!

Thanks, I'm glad you had fun with it!

Agreed on all points!

• The 5-candle phase definitely overstays its welcome. I only got around to implementing the progression system the night before the deadline and spent most of the next day implementing hyperdash, so I didn't end up with a lot of time to playtest full runs until after submission.
• Yes! Controller support would have been awesome. I even mentioned to the team early on that it would feel much better with a controller, but we somehow never got around to actually implementing it. One of my teammates implemented it in their own branch the day after the jam!

Thanks for playing!

Wonderfully disgusting! The whole look and feel of the meat, from the texture to the pulsing and heartbeat, was absolutely awesome. The pacing of the game was solid too. Just as I was starting to lose interest by the end of week 3, we move on and end the story. The dialogue leading into week 4 built a nice little bit of suspense as well.

My only real complaint is that the radar doesn't really work if you move it too quickly. You have to pan it across the meat very slowly to get a decent reading.

Overall, a great (and technically impressive) entry into the genre of low-poly, meat-based horror games!

Thanks for playing! By "draggy" do you mean the walk speed is too slow, or is it something else?

Super impressive entry, even more so considering that it was solo! Very satisfying SFX and fun artwork. Gameplay was very fluid, and the gun was really satisfying to shoot. I really enjoyed the dynamic between growing/healing the nymph and maintaining your own HP. It started a little slow, but really picked up into a nice challenge towards the mid-game and end.

Definitely one of my top games for the jam so far!

Great job! This was a very polished little game. The art and sound were great. The story was good too, if a little rushed (understandable for a jam game) and a bit heavy on the explicit statements of "I'm growing too" (this is a very good case for show-don't-tell, but I get wanting to be explicit for the theme). I went for all endings and really enjoyed that you get the same story but different bits of character lore depending on which plant you grow.

The accessibility options were nice to see, and I'm happy there was controller support.

I had the "Badass Detection" option toggled on for my first playthrough, but I'm not really sure what it did.

The weakest element for me was, unfortunately, the gameplay itself. In the first one or two stages, you can just afk until the wave ends, and in later stages you just walk in a circle until the wave ends. Basically just waiting either way, which made going for all endings rather tedious.

I also found a bug when replaying where the first wave ends pretty much immediately on picking up the first drop and then you feed your plant hundreds of pickups. It looks like the pickup counter from the last wave of the previous playthrough doesn't get cleared when starting again from the beginning. I had to refresh the page each run to start fresh.

A notebook with past dishes would be a nice touch!

Yeah, the soundtrack was done by the same teammate who made the awesome cover, and he did a great job. The last phase of the game exists entirely because I really liked one of the tracks and wanted to make a piece of gameplay to match its intensity!

Fun little game with very straightforward controls. Would love an in-game leaderboard. I think I'm on top at the time of posting with 2300, at least going by the other comments!

Congrats on completing your first Godot game! That's awesome!

Is that a high score I see?

Your move!

Very cute and funny! Great pixel art, dialogue was a ton of fun, and I loved all the references to other game music. The hard cut to the parrot in the Santa hat got me good!

Gameplay-wise, I found it a little too easy. I actually did a second playthrough where I didn't hit any notes just to see the head actually grow. It also would've been nice if there was an obvious "missed note" sound, as it was a bit hard to tell if I was hitting notes or not.

Great job, and congrats on your first GWJ!

Cool idea. The "om nom nom" sound and the "Went to work: - Happiness" both got a laugh out of me. I did two playthroughs: "don't go to work" and "only go to work and grow tree." I got evicted in both, but at least I had a nice tree. Didn't really see where the Happiness stat came into play, though. I think I got fired in the "don't go to work" run, but the text flashed by too quickly for me to actually read. As the tree grows, it also covers up the text on the screen in the backyard.

Congrats on finishing your first GWJ!

Thanks for playing!

Adding an indicator for nearby health pickups is a good idea. I've definitely found myself just wandering around trying to find one.

Yeah, the survival phase is brutal. It wasn't even in the plan at first, but then wjbinthemorning dropped that final music track on us and I couldn't resist building a phase to match that intensity! It's the only phase I don't manage to clear every time.

Really awesome work. I had a ton of fun playing. I've actually played through it a few times now just looking for/playing around with different blessings. You really nailed it with the atmosphere, and I loved all the pixel art for the monsters and the lamb.

The only issue I noticed was a bug where you could get both blessings (and/or duplicates of the same one) after picking one from the lamb. Basically, once the lamb gives you a blessing, even though the blessing choice window goes away, the blessing icons inside it remain clickable. Clicking them will flash the blessing choice screen and give you another blessing. This hidden screen remains available until you leave the room with the lamb. The blessing choice from the altar inside the dungeon doesn't seem to have this bug.

That aside, it's really a fantastic game. I can't overstate how much I enjoyed this one!

I think I'm bad at this sort of game. I keep getting overwhelmed by wave 9.  Either way, I had fun playing with the different plants. Glad I read your comment below or I really wouldn't have known how to spawn them. Also, the font used in the tutorial was very hard to read.

Congrats on completing your first GWJ!

Thanks for playing, glad you liked the idea!

The dash is very much balanced around a mechanic where dashing over a wave without taking damage instantly refunds that dash charge (and can actually profit dash charges if you dash over multiple waves at once). I tried to explain that via the imp, but it's very possible that, between trying to add humor and not ramble too long, I failed to deliver that information clearly!

No idea what was going on, but the sounds and visuals were very nice.  I see from comments below that you didn't have time to get the tutorial in, but maybe you could put more of a "How To Play" onto the game page in the meantime?

Thanks for playing and for the great feedback! I had fun writing the dialogue.

The game may be more punishing than it's meant to be largely due to me not making obvious some important mechanics (e.g. holding SHIFT lets you dash longer, dashing over multiple waves in one dash is heavily rewarded, touching demonic activities/structures throughout the circle will heal you a pretty large amount, etc.).

There is a sound on collapsing buildings, but it's proximity-based and fairly wimpy. Definitely agree we could've done better there and on the feeling of destruction in general.

Very much agree on the space-to-skip confirmation too. Unfortunately, the skip feature was added very late and I didn't notice how easy to was to miss important instructions until post-release.